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January 01, 2012

Centennial: Life in 1912

Here's my little glance at 1912. I'm telling you right now, in case you didn't already know this, but this year is going to get a lot more look backs than usual because it marks the one hundredth anniversary of a couple of famous events: the disastrous end of Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition; the sinking of the Titanic; and Theodore Roosevelt's last stand as the candidate for his own progressive Bull Moose party (note: at that time Bull Moose probably didn't sound like such a non-starter of a name considering it was only about a hundred years since the days of parties called "Know-Nothings" and "Free Soil").Oh, and welcome to the Union, Arizona and New Mexico.

I wish I could figure out how to do links within a post so you could jump directly to your topic of interest, but I haven't been able to find out how to do that, if it's even possible. The best I can do is give you this little non-linking table of contents so you at least have some idea of the order of things.

(I got these from Wikipedia, same with births and deaths, so all warnings apply. Nothing seemed crazily suspicious to me, but let me know if you see anything wrong. Any notes from me are in italics - KA)

Scott's expedition at the South Pole. The grim faces come from finishing in second place.

January 1 – The Republic of China is established.January 4 – The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by Royal Charter.January 5 (Old Style December 23, 1911) Prague Party Conference: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party break away from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Stanislavski and Craig's seminal symbolist Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet opens.January 6 – New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state.January 8 – The African National Congress is founded.January 12 – Thirty thousand workers walk out of textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, beginning the so-called Bread and Roses strike, the most dramatic and successful strike in American labor history.January 17 – British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four become the second expeditionary group to reach the South Pole.January 23 – The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague.January 27 – The city of Chandler, Quebec, is founded.

February 14 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.

March 1 – Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a moving airplane.March 5 – Italian forces are the first to use airships for a military purpose, utilising them for reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines.March 7 Roald Amundsen (in Hobart) announces his success in reaching the South Pole last December. French aviator Henri Seimet makes the first non-stop flight from Paris to London, in three hours. March 12 – The Girl Scouts of the USA are founded.March 16 – Lawrence Oates, dying member of Scott's South Pole expedition, leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time."March 27 – Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo gives 3,000 cherry blossom trees to be planted in Washington, D.C., to symbolize the friendship between the two countries.March 29 – The remaining members of Scott's South Pole expedition die.March 30 – France establishes a protectorate over Morocco.

The Titanic, when it worked.

April 10 – The British ocean liner RMS Titanic leaves Southampton in England on her maiden voyage for New York City.April 11 – RMS Titanic arrives at Queenstown in Ireland, picking up her final complement of passengers before steaming westwards for New York.April 14 (11:40 p.m.) – RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean.April 15 (2:20 a.m.) – RMS Titanic sinks, taking with her the lives of more than 1,500 people. (You can read the NYTimes original article here.)

April 16 Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel. The Royal Ontario Museum is established in Toronto, Ontario.April 17 – A solar eclipse is seen across Europe.

A crowd in New York waits for the Carpathia and the Titanic survivors.

The Carpathia arrives at Pier 54.

April 18 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrives in New York with 705 survivors of the Titanic diaster. (By the way, the classic of Titanic books is A Night to Remember by Walter Lord; read it if you haven't.)April 19 – The United States Senate initiates an official inquiry into the Titanic disaster, hastily issuing subpoenas for White Star personnel before they can return to the United Kingdom.April 20 Tiger Stadium (Detroit) opens. Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, opens.April 30 – The cable ship Mackay-Bennett arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, carrying the bodies of 306 victims of the Titanic disaster recovered from the North Atlantic.

May 2 – The British Board of Trade inquiry into the Titanic disaster begins, presided over by Lord Mersey.May 4 The New York Times reports a find of gigantic humans made while excavating a mound at Lake Delevan, Wisconsin. According to the news account, 18 skeletons are found in one large mound at a Lake Lawn farm. Suffragists and their supporters parade in New York City. More than ten thousand women and a thousand men are reported to have participated.May 5The Olympic Games open in Stockholm, Sweden.May 12 – Grand opening of the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California.May 13 – In the United Kingdom, the Royal Flying Corps (forerunner of the Royal Air Force) is established.May 18 – The Detroit Tigers go on strike to protest the suspension of Ty Cobb. A replacement team recruited from the coaching staff and local colleges is fielded to avoid a forfeiture to the Philadelphia A's in a lopsided loss.May 23 – The Hamburg America Line's SS Imperator is launched in Hamburg and is the world's largest ship.May 25 – After more than a month and thousands of hours of testimony, the American inquiry into the Titanic disaster concludes, placing the bulk of the blame upon the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, and Captain Edward Smith.May 30 – Joe Dawson wins the second Indianapolis 500-Mile Race after Ralph DePalma's Mercedes breaks down within sight of the finish.

June 4 – A fire in Istanbul destroys 1,120 buildings.June 5 – U.S. Marines land in Cuba.June 6 – June 8 – Mount Novartis erupts in Alaska.June 8 – Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures.June 10 – Villisca Axe Murders are committed in Villisca, Iowa.June 18 – The Republican National Convention nominates incumbent President William Howard Taft in Chicago, defeating a challenge by former President Theodore Roosevelt, whose delegates bolt the convention.June 25 – The Democratic National Convention nominates New Jersey Gov. Thomas Woodrow Wilson in Baltimore.June 30 – The deadliest tornado in Canadian history happens in Regina, Saskatchewan being called the Regina Cyclone.

July 3 – The British inquiry into the Titanic disaster concludes.July 12 – United States release of Sarah Bernhardt's film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth is influential on the development of the movie feature.July 19 – A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg explodes over the town of Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona causing thousands of pieces of debris to rain down on the town.July 28 – A pier at Binz on the German island of Rügen collapses under the load of a thousand people waiting for the cruise steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm; seventeen are drowned.July 30 – Emperor Meiji of Japan dies. He is succeeded by his son Yoshihito who becomes Emperor Taisho. In Japanese History, the event marks the end of the Meiji era and the beginning of the Taisho era.

August 1 – The Jungfraubahn rack railway is inaugurated in Switzerland.August 4 – United States occupation of Nicaragua: U.S. Marines land from the USS Annapolis in Nicaragua to support the conservative government at its request.

Tanned, rested, and ready--TR's back.

August 5 – Dissident U.S. Republicans form the Progressive or Bull Moose Party, and nominate former President Theodore Roosevelt as their presidential candidate.August 12 – Sultan Abd Al-Hafid of Morocco abdicates.August 25 – The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.

September 25 – The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York City, New York.September 28 – The Ulster Covenant is signed by half a million Ulstermen and women in opposition to the Third Irish Home Rule Bill.

October 8 – The First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against Turkey.October 14 – While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former President Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt delivers his scheduled speech. After finishing his speech, he went to the hospital, where it was deduced that if he had not had his speech in his breast pocket when he was shot, he most likely would have died.October 16 Bulgarian pilots Radul Minkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history, at the railway station of Karaagac near Edirne against Turkey. The Boston Red Sox, assisted by a famous error, defeat the New York Giants in extra innings to win the 1912 World Series, in what is considered one of the greatest games of baseball ever played.October 18 – Italy and the Ottoman Empire signed a treaty in Ouchy near Lausanne ending the Italo-Turkish War.

December 18 – Piltdown Man, thought to be the fossilized skull of a hitherto unknown form of early human, presented to the Geological Society of London. It is revealed to be a hoax in 1953.December 30 – The First Balkan War ends temporarily: Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the two-month long war.

A propeller driven sled? Sure, why not! How else will they travel in 2012?

Pulp fiction.

Pictures - Movies

This is a year where movies were really beginning to be more like movies as we know them, especially in their influence on pop culture. Both Gish sisters made their debut this year, by the way.

Sarah Bernhardt, captured on film.

Mary Pickford, in trouble again in "The Mender of the Nets."

Lillian Gish deals with gangsters in the slums in "The Musketeers of Pig Alley."

It's not all grim, though--Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett are making comedies.

Pictures - Fashion

You can find a lot of great information about fashion during this year from people who know much more about it than me. This site has a fantastic breakdown of what was in fashion in 1912, courtesy of Vogue. Here is a great article from the period about Lucile Duff-Gordon, a British fashion designer. The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has sparked an interest in fashion from that year; if you're a sewer, you can find out where to get 1912 periods here. As for general trends, even I, fashion-impaired as I am, can tell you to look out for suit-like dresses, draping, feathers as accessories, and oddly, as silhouettes become narrower, gigantosaurus sized hats.

Now here are some pictures.

Women in Lucile Duff-Gordon tea gowns. I never wear a gown for tea, alas.

Paris Fashions, on what looks like a rather windy day.

Practical AND fashionable!

Suits, suits, suits.

Hats bigger than umbrellas.

Draperies and accordion pleats are very good if you are a window treatment.

Everyone is very interested in practical--and beautiful--clothes this year.

Comments

Centennial: Life in 1912

Here's my little glance at 1912. I'm telling you right now, in case you didn't already know this, but this year is going to get a lot more look backs than usual because it marks the one hundredth anniversary of a couple of famous events: the disastrous end of Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition; the sinking of the Titanic; and Theodore Roosevelt's last stand as the candidate for his own progressive Bull Moose party (note: at that time Bull Moose probably didn't sound like such a non-starter of a name considering it was only about a hundred years since the days of parties called "Know-Nothings" and "Free Soil").Oh, and welcome to the Union, Arizona and New Mexico.

I wish I could figure out how to do links within a post so you could jump directly to your topic of interest, but I haven't been able to find out how to do that, if it's even possible. The best I can do is give you this little non-linking table of contents so you at least have some idea of the order of things.